I am running Top, and load is drifting along at 1.20, or even as low as something like 0.56. Then within ten seconds the load rockets to over 150, a few second more and it is over 400!!! No exaggeration, it the load accelerates really that fast!

One server barely hung on still running top to give me this before it finally died:

Okay, so I reboot, check the logs, check the email queue for masses of spam being sent, check the tmp directory for anything suspicious, check the secure, messages, etc. logs looking for some hint as to what may have occured, and nada, zip, nothing. The server just returns to normal after a reboot as if nothing has happened.

And of course I am unable to run netstat or anything else at the time when the load is occuring.

What the heck could be going on here? Anyone have any ideas? Anyway to prevent this?